


Ostensible Froghunting

by kayliemalinza



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 23:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Jade go frog-hunting. Or so it would seem. 20 minute freewrite.</p>
<p>Teaser: "It'll be fun," she says, and yeah, it's SUPER FUN slogging through a marsh with a net in hand. The mud bubbles weird-smelling gas and you're getting a blister on your palm. "FROGSSSSS," she says. The sun glints off her glasses when she turns to grin at you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ostensible Froghunting

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr user femchef did a reading of this fic, [posted here](http://www.femchef.tumblr.com/post/91099479696/ostensible-frog-hunting-can-be-read-here-on-ao3).

"It'll be fun," she says, and yeah, it's SUPER FUN slogging through a marsh with a net in hand. The mud bubbles weird-smelling gas and you're getting a blister on your palm. "FROGSSSSS," she says. The sun glints off her glasses when she turns to grin at you.

You tilt your chin down in a solemn nod and you hope your shades are glinting back. Maybe the glints will meet mid-air and have an electron-collision party. Except you've already seen the glint off her glasses, so it's passed already, but the sun's still shining

(you think)

so there'll be another glint soon enough, bounced from a steady stream of particles at the end of a long journey from the pimply face of a star and its churning guts. The inside of a star is the equivalent of three burritos with extra hot sauce, a bowl of five-alarm chili, and some broccoli. You know, for the iron. Stars make iron, right? Maybe there's iron atoms bashing you in the head right now, ricocheted from Jade's round-rimmed spectacles.

"Dave, pay attention!" she says, and points to the muck surrounding your left thigh. "There was a frog right there! You didn't even try to catch it!"

"Maybe we should let the little dudes go," you say. "Live and let live. Maybe one of these frogs is the next Ghandi."

Jade giggles, but you don't think she's really listening to you

(you don't think she's really here.)

"Ooh, dibs on that one!" Jade cries, and bounds off to a tuft of marsh grass that looks like every other tuft out here. How the hell does she move that fast thigh-deep in

(nothing)

mud and marshwater? Maybe she doesn't have legs anymore; maybe she's just a sudden-stop pelvis skimming the surface.

You poke at the blister. You hold up your hand and slip the shades down your nose just far enough to take a look at the war wound with bare eyes, squishing the fluid around in its translucent skin-sack.

"I GOT YOU, LITTLE FROGGIE!"

You jump and shove your glasses back up. You're not shy about your eyes or anything, but a man's eyewear is a serious thing, and the sun out here is ridiculous, bashing you in the head with atoms, right, and when you aren't wearing sunglasses all of the sudden everyone notices the freckles on your nose.

You drop the net. The plop makes you sick and the slow sink of it into the sludge is worse. Jade isn't even looking at you. She's holding up a frog by a back leg and grinning. The splayed-leg shadow slithers over the muck.

"Come on, Dave, you're never going to catch up at this rate!" she yells over, like there was ever a chance that you could.


End file.
